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PRINCE GEORGE – New Democrat Leader Adrian Dix has released a multimillion dollar election plan that he believes will help grow and improve B.C.'s forest industry, but critics say the proposal makes promises that will be hard to keep.

In Prince George Monday, Dix announced the five-point forestry plan that would see $310 million invested in the industry over five years if his party wins the election in May.

The NDP leader announced his government would invest in skills training, to improve forest health, to expand global markets for B.C. lumber and to cut raw log exports, while it reinstates a jobs protection commissioner.

“Skills training is really the principle focus of our economic plan, to ensure young people have the skills they need for the jobs of the future,'' Dix said.

The B.C. Liberal Party immediately criticized the plan, saying it lacks policy details.

“After months of delay, I think British Columbians were expecting more,'' said Forest Minister Steve Thomson in a news release.

George Hoberg, a forest policy expert at the University of British Columbia, said Dix's promise to reduce raw log exports will be hard to keep.

“Raw logs are always something that politicians talk about, but it's actually very hard to deliver in terms of either policy or real change in the industry,'' Hoberg said.

“Our comparative advantage is in raw resource material or in commodities, not in more labour-intensive value-added production,''
he said.

The NDP's commitment to improve forest health includes an emphasis on increasing the province's research capacity, updating forest inventories and doubling the number of seedlings planted annually.

Hoberg said he is impressed with the plan's focus on forest health.

“The biggest challenge that we face in forestry is renewing the forest that has been disseminated by the mountain pine beetle and the Liberals have not been particularly effective at investing resources on that,'' Hoberg said.

“The one big change that we will likely see, if the NDP is elected, is a greater commitment to government funding of inventory and silviculture,'' he said.

Hoberg was surprised at the lack of discussion of environmental issues in the NDP plan – something he said the Liberal forestry plan also lacks.

Ken Wu at the Ancient Forest Alliance called the plan “a big disappointment ecologically.''

“It essentially continues the unsustainable status quo of old growth liquidation and over cutting which has led to the collapse of ecosystems and communities,'' Wu said.

Dix campaigned for party leadership with a promise to address old growth deforestation, but he now appears to be reneging on his commitment, Wu said.

“We are hoping that the party will move forward with additional policy commitments in the lead up to the election so that Dix fulfills his promise to develop a provincial old growth plan which was his 2011 leadership bid promise,'' Wu said.

Dix said the plan was developed in consultation with forest industry businesses, union leaders and with communities.

Some of the suggestions are in line with a 2011 report created by the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, which suggests tightening raw log exports and increasing staff levels within the B.C. forest service.

A spokesperson from the Council of Forest Industries, which represents over a dozen forest companies in the province, wasn't available for comment.

Globe and Mail online article: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ndps-forestry-policy-plank-sparks-partisan-ire-disappoints-ecologists/article11253131/

Twenty years ago today, about 30 residents of Tofino were driving up and down the highway by Long Beach, communicating via handheld radios, tracking a helicopter carrying B.C.’s premier of the day and select media.

A local guy listening in on emergency, aviation and boat communications was transmitting the play-by-play, while the helicopter sought a quiet landing spot where the premier could make a “contained” statement about the fate of Clayoquot Sound’s forests.

Nothing that followed, however, in what was to become the Clayoquot Summer of 1993, could be construed as “contained.”

The Clayoquot land-use decision of April 13, 1993, sparked a mass protest that put Clayoquot Sound’s ancient temperate rainforests on the international map. Over a period of six months, the region became an icon for an environmental awakening.

Clayoquot symbolized all that was wrong with industrial logging and was a touchstone for people’s hope for change. It shook the province, inspired people to action and hatched a marketplace-oriented strategy that has been utilized in environmental campaigns from the farthest corner of Vancouver Island to the Great Bear Rainforest to Indonesia, the Amazon and beyond.

The conflict, in fact, began in the previous decade with a group of volunteers from the Friends of Clayoquot Sound and First Nations leaders who rose to protect their traditional territories. Reaction to the 1993 Clayoquot decision transformed the local conflict into a movement with reverberations to this day.

Clayoquot Summer ’93 was triggered because the decision left two-thirds of the region, including many intact rainforest valleys, open to industrial logging. Public outrage about this decision funnelled into the largest act of non-violent civil disobedience in Canadian history, culminating in the arrest of 856 of the 12,000-plus protesters, who were tried in mass trials and jailed.

By October 1993, when the protests wrapped up, it had spilled into years known as the “War in the Woods.” Environmental groups targeted corporate customers of B.C. wood and paper products around the world, causing the province grief and the industry millions in lumber and paper sales.

In response to the non-violent but highly energized uprising, the political ground in B.C. shifted. Clayoquot marked a renaissance in First Nations land-rights discussions, and environmental groups became powerful intermediaries, both in the wood-supply chain and in the political discourse. Importantly, the public became defiant over what they saw to be legal but wrong — the destruction of the environment — and began to stir.

Out of the controversy, the First Nations in Clayoquot Sound, who hadn’t been consulted on the land-use plan, were chosen to be first in the province’s new treaty process, and a groundbreaking pre-treaty agreement was signed.

By August, then-premier Mike Harcourt established the Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices. The outcry against wanton clearcut logging broke through barriers, sparking the province to initiate B.C.’s first forest-practices code. The logging industry circled its wagons in an attempt to defend its tarnished reputation in the marketplace, but change was apace.

The fight for Clayoquot was a polarizing issue. Wedges were driven between communities as we grappled with the biggest issues of our day with nowhere but the public forum to play them out. And yet, we all crept, agonizingly, toward breakthroughs that British Columbians can be proud of.

What happened in Clayoquot Sound, beginning in April 1993, has had a major influence on global environmental movements, the Great Bear Rainforest campaign and even the oilsands and pipeline campaigns of today — as well as on conservation of Clayoquot’s forests.

It has been 20 years. Just over half of Clayoquot’s rainforests are now off-limits to logging. But many of the region’s intact rainforest valleys are still unprotected, and the region’s First Nations communities still struggle economically.

As the anniversaries of the Clayoquot Sound land-use decision and subsequent uprising of the Summer of ’93 are marked, we see new opportunities for conservation and human well-being growing again in Clayoquot Sound. A lasting solution may soon be at hand that honours the movements for environmental and social justice begun those 20 years ago, in the magnificent, inspiring place that is Clayoquot Sound.

There are many more stories to tell about those times. There are more in the making there now.

Valerie Langer is with ForestEthics Solutions. Eduardo Sousa is with Greenpeace. Maryjka Mychajlowycz is a member of Friends of Clayoquot Sound. Torrance Coste is a campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.